6
Jack found a small neighborhood no-name bar and earned a lot of stares as the only white face in the place. The available drafts were various Buds and Millers so he ordered a bottle of Corona—no lime—and a bar pie. He took it to the front window where he had a good view of Cordova's office across Tremont.
Traffic was thick on the sidewalks as well as the street where every third car seemed to be a black Lincoln Continental or Town Car with a livery sticker.
The Corona was good, but he barely tasted the pie. Good thing, because the backroom microwave oven had left the crust as gummy as the stingy layer of cheese. Hard to tell where one left off and the other began.
Not that he cared. He was eating simply to keep from being hungry later. Knowing that his face now resided in the Dormentalist computer had filched his appetite. Didn't want his photo anywhere.
But he hadn't been able to do anything about it. He'd considered pushing the privacy-nut persona a little further but had had a feeling that wouldn't wash with Jensen. The big guy was no dummy, and Jack sensed he could be trouble.
Maybe he was already trouble. He'd had him followed again. The same guy who'd tailed him yesterday had tried to dog him again today. Jack had lost him easily in the Rockefeller Center mob and then headed straight up here to the Bronx.
Jack read the tail as a sign Jensen might not be completely sold on his Jason Amurri persona. Maybe just his nature: He didn't seem to be a trusting guy in the first place, and no doubt a big part of his job was sniffing out trouble and heading it off at the pass. But beyond that, he appeared to have a chip on his shoulder where Jack was concerned. Probably hadn't liked looking bad in front of his boss.
So Jack had let them take his picture. Now what to do about it? He'd have to think of something. Maybe Russ could handle it, although Jack sensed he might be leery about serious hacking, considering how it could screw up his parole.
Checked his watch. Almost noon. Cordova had probably fired up his computer by now. Jack wished he could have been a fly on the wall when he'd opened his first file, then watched the growing horror on his face as he realized he'd been wiped out.
He was halfway through the pie and three-quarters done with his Corona when he spotted Cordova sidling out onto the sidewalk with his computer tower cradled against his big belly. As he started moving uphill, Jack gulped the rest of his beer and headed for the door.
It took him longer than he liked to weave through the lunchtime crowd—it looked like Sidewalk Sale Day, with more clothes and electronics and miscellaneous merchandise displayed outside the stores than in—and when he got to the street, Cordova was gone.
"What the—?"
Had he jumped into a cab? Jack was about to launch into a litany of self-excoriation when he noticed a sign just a few doors to his left: Computer Doctor.
"Let's hope," Jack muttered as he dodged across the street.
He stopped before the front window and pretended to be looking at the display of monitors and keyboards and various gazillion-megabyte hard drives. A quick glance up showed Cordova standing at the counter, waving his arms at the white-coated clerk.
Jack let out a long breath and retreated to the far side of the street to watch and wait.